“Blazing ore!” Koth hissed.
The entire upper portion of the cavern was thick with the moths, flapping and bumping into one another. Koth looked around the room.
“Was this a farm?” he said. “I did not know they existed underground. They are never found in numbers such as this anymore. Never.” He looked back to the blinkmoths.
“They are the only natives to this place and were made by Karn’s hand,” Venser said. “Therefore, they are living manifestations of his creative essence.”
“Well, they do not fill me with awe,” Elspeth said. She squinted at the other side of the huge space. “They are rather runty little things, in fact.” She kept squinting.
“They were supposed to be gone long ago,” Koth said. “Gone to vedalken harvest.”
“They live, all right,” Elspeth said. “It is us I worry about. I see shapes advancing on us.”
Koth’s eyes instantly turned to where Elspeth was staring. Many dark shapes no larger than the blinkmoths were loping toward them across the wide room.
“They are Phyrexians,” Venser said, still watching the blinkmoths. The more he watched them the more he wanted some of his potion. The more his chin began to shake.
“How do you know?” It was Koth who spoke.
“I can feel their metal feet vibrating the floor.”
The others were quiet as they felt for the vibrations. The floor trembled under their feet.
“There are very many of them,” Koth said.
They were advancing from all sides, and in large numbers. The Phyrexians surged toward the island of blue light cast by Venser’s wisps.
Koth was already as red as an ember. He cracked his neck and stretched his arms behind his back in preparation. Elspeth’s sword was out. She held it loosely at her side watching the howling hoard advance on them. Venser was fighting hard to resist the desire rising in his chest to pull the tiny cork out of his flask and drain the few drops remaining down his throat. The three Planeswalkers had formed a triangle around the fleshling, who stood watching the advancing Phyrexians with a look of resolute detachment.
“How many are their numbers?” Koth asked.
“Plenty for all,” Elspeth hissed.
Then they were close, the Phyrexians, and Elspeth raised her sword and began running. She crashed into the first line of the enemy at a brisk trot-cutting three down with strikes too fast to see. The Phyrexians in her area trampled one another as they struggled to form a dense clump around her while she moved about her grim work, chopping each and every one of them down. In the red-tinged light, with Venser’s blue wisps overhead, her sword blazed a bright white, and many of the Phyrexians fell back, screaming.
Koth had grown long columns of loosely held rock out of his wrists which he used as whips. With these he was able to crush lines upon lines of Phyrexians.
But still more of the gabbling, dripping abominations pushed forward.
Venser fell back to stand next to the fleshling. When seven Phyrexians got too near, Venser blew out a cloud that caused their metal substructures to turn to the consistency of warm lead, and they fell apart into messes of writhing skin and sinew.
The pile of Phyrexian dead around Elspeth got higher and higher until Venser could not easily see the white warrior. But he could see her bright blade, and unless he was very wrong, it was not swinging as fast as it had been. Koth too was letting his rock whips rest on the floor as he huffed.
Venser watched a force of perhaps twenty Phyrexians break away from the group awaiting Elspeth’s attention and circle around to him and the fleshling. Venser looked past them. He noticed that the darker, far away parts of the huge room were without Phyrexians. He could teleport them there and stage attacks from that relative safety.
With the fleshling’s hand in his, Venser closed his eyes. He mouthed the words of power and felt the pull, then pop that told him he had left. But something was wrong. When he opened his eyes, both he and the fleshling were floating momentarily high above the ground, in the flock of blinkmoths. Far below, Venser saw Elspeth and Koth battling the Phyrexians in two pools of light. A blinkmoth flew into his check and another against his leg. The fleshling was convulsing and jerking on the end of his arm and Venser himself felt a tremendous fluttering all through his body like he would vomit three hundred times at once.
Then they began to fall.
He closed his eyes, but found it difficult to find the words that had come so easily before they appeared in the group of blinkmoths. As they picked up speed Venser set his mind on the floor, imaging what it looked like.
They were plummeting downward.
Venser took a last breath. He had only moments, he knew. He forced the words out of his mouth and with a sudden pop they appeared sprawled and dizzy on the hot floor.
Off to their side, Elspeth’s sword flashed and the Phyrexians screamed in the rosy light. Koth’s rock whips boomed on the floor. But Venser knew he could not stand. He lay with all of his limbs trembling so that he could not trust them to move where he told them. His heels banged on the floor rhythmically and his neck was jerking his chin back and forth. A blinkmoth crawled down his neck.
The fleshling was standing above him in the dimness, her eyes glowing a slight blue as she looked down at the artificer. Even in his state, Venser knew that the fleshling’s eyes were not glowing before he had teleported with her. His trembling continued until suddenly it stopped. He lay gasping and exhausted until the last tremors finally left. It had never been that bad, even after that first teleport that caused the whole mess.
Still the fleshling stared down at Venser with her blue eyes glowing impassively. “I can feel the blinkmoths inside me,” the fleshling said. “I can feel them flying in my skull.”
There was a certain calmness to her that put Venser in mind of Karn. She was telling him there were moths in her skull as calmly as she might that she preferred cloudy skies to sunny.
“I feel … different,” she said.
“I also do,” Venser said. It was true. He felt much worse than he had before. Plus, his right hand would not totally stop shaking. Even if he concentrated, it would not stop. Concentration always stopped it in the past.
Venser managed to push himself up off the floor. His head spun and he sat down hard. Still the fleshling watched him. “Help me up,” Venser said.
She bent and took Venser’s hand and helped him to his feet. He felt awful, like his brain was still half-materialized in his head. He knew that each teleport made his condition worse, but it was a drastic worsening of symptoms.
“You are wounded?” the fleshling said, cocking her head to the side as she waited for the answer.
“Yes. Are you?”
“No,” the fleshling said. “I feel every pore in my body.”
“And what do they feel like?”
“They feel like they are dancing.”
Unfortunately, Venser realized exactly what she was describing. He had felt it after he started drinking his potion. He had not felt that strong a reaction since he started depending on it.
Something screamed and they turned in time to see Elspeth hammer her blade down on the head of a large Phyrexian. As they watched, the creature’s two parts peeled apart to the chest, and it fell back, kicking. It was the last of the beasts, and Elspeth put her sword tip down and leaned heavily on it, gasping for air, her shoulders stooped.
Koth was lying on his back with his arms and legs splayed, huffing. The bodies of the fallen enemy lay in stinking piles all around. The far-away glowing side of the cavern flickered.
Venser stood unsteadily.
“We must walk,” the fleshling said. “We must.” She turned and began walking toward the glow. Elspeth nodded and began stumbling after the fleshling, unbelievably dragging her sword behind her. Venser followed. Koth stood up from the floor and ambled after them.
They slept where they fell, each taking turns on watch. When Venser woke he went looking for water pools left from the dripping of the upper levels. He found some shallow pools to drink from. The others woke and Venser showed them the pools and then they all walked on, clanking steps on the metal floor.